We start our oyster mushrooms in coffee grounds

Sunset

As a departure from our on-site projects, I decided to take the Back to the Roots oyster mushroom growing kit home and get my twin teenage boys involved. The guys thought it sounded like fun, and also, the kit needs to be misted twice a day to keep the mushrooms happy, and I figured the weekend misting would be easier to handle this way.

The kit consists of the outer cardboard box, an inner bag of used Peet's coffee grounds that have been innoculated with mycelium, brief instructions, and a small mister bottle.

Rowan and Jasper with the mushroom bagWe followed the instructions, with a few modifications. To get the box open on one side, we found that we needed to cut through the dotted lines in the cardboard box with a small knife. Then we slit a cross through the bag of mycelium-inoculated coffee grounds that’s inside. The directions don’t say how big the cut should be, so we just took a guess.

At this point we pulled the bag out of the box (“looks like a Frappuccino!” Jasper noted) and soaked it overnight in a bucket of water.